Broken Frontier

Okay, the fact that this article is surrounded by "John McCain For President" ads on the day it goes live, is...prophetic (if the ads aren't there, they've simply moved on to ad Hell, there hopefully to be forgotten for all time).

Anywho, deep breath, let's get to it: Mark Millar writes high concept stories, and War Heroes is no exception: take war in the Middle East, focus primarily on the American military response to it, and then the subsequent decline of American culture, now add super-powers.

Yes, in Millar’s imaginings of the near-future, the U.S. military concocts pills that grant limited-time powers.  There's a different pill for each effect—a super-speed pill, super-strength, night vision, “wide awake”, and rumors abound about a flight pill.  So this is DC’s original Hourman mixed with The Ultimates, which means it’s derivative, although I admit there's a certain appeal to the idea. Pills and war and military-might and super-powers: what’s not to like? Under Millar’s pen and Tony Harris’ pencils…well…pretty much everything.

With his original spin on Marvel’s The Avengers in the Ultimate U.'s  The Ultimates, Millar dished out wry and often spot-on commentary about super-powers and the realities of government intervention in such, but then, in The Ultimates 2 he veered horrifically off-course with poorly-handled play-ups of patriotism and an over-simplification of nearly every theme involved (even though they were as commonplace as Wolverine guest-appearances).  Then came Civil War, which continued this trend—inexplicable, extreme actions, complete lack of character motivations, sledgehammer shots at politics and law in general.  Now, completing Millar’s unconnected political quadrology, comes War Heroes, and I simply do not understand how such pedestrian, fan fic handling of real-world global events can be published with a straight face and a pride that is anything but misplaced.

Speculative fiction can (and often should) be fun, and it can be forgiven should it ride the coattails of pulp-fiction ignorance, even in the enlightened information age of today, but Millar tries to explain away the fantastical aspects of War Heroes with the absolute minimum of effort (he says: violence = government over-reaction = dystopia).  So we’re suddenly in a world where “antisocial behavior units” patrol the American public, army men and women get super-pills, and regardless of the fact that America is a democracy (and apparently still is, even in this therefore-inexplicably bastardized future), a literally never-ending war has been committed to (whatever happened to re-elections?).  This all occurs because of a few more bombings on American soil.  Mind you, this doesn’t occur after hundreds of bombings anywhere else, but the U.S. of A. whips out super-power pills and imprisons its people after just a few attacks.  Sure, it’s near-future sci-fi, but this is pure Millar, with actions and motivations and sudden advancements in plot that make zero sense, even within their own alternate-universe logic.

Insult to injury, the lead characters are quickly introduced, and all of them are unlikable, surly, childish, obnoxious, and plain ol’ vanilla stupid, and then we’re off, the first issue at an end with five more to go.  The general scenario holds promise (super-powered army folk are always inticing), but Millar’s use of them is haphazard, his nuance of the politics and cause-and-effect global concerns involved non-existent, and his dialogue, mirroring his vulgar attempts at crafting a fashionable dystopia, offers only the barest of necessities, every line a statement made solely to give information to the reader, there being not a single more artful construction throughout.

Then comes Tony Harris’ artwork, a habitually beauteous thing elsewhere, but here it lacks all the creative layout and dynamism of Ex Machina and Starman .  Inked by the equally (usually) superb Cliff Rathburn, Harris’ pages suffer an intense motionlessness, faces captured with mutant-extreme expressions more comical and offputting than anything else, too-thin and pale final lines, awkward figures in stock square panel after stock square panel, then drenched in sleep inducing, blasé colors by JD Mettler.  There’s one double-page spread that works wonders (see below), but beyond this, the creative team seems at odds with each other rather than a unit.  Harris even gets “Art” credit here, regardless that there’s an inker and colorist besides, meaning the most he could have done was pencils.  He probably should have stuck with “Pencils”, the damn diva (I joke, it probably isn't his fault he got an erroneous credit).

This story should be everything I love about intelligent, liberal-yet-gung-ho creators making happy together, and yet War Heroes is an intensely piss-poor comic.  It ranks with the very worst of self-publishing, the self-indulgent, amateur, infantile dreck that often gets churned out long before creators find their mature voices or fully-charged visuals.  It’s done by a bunch of super-stars, so who’s to tell them no?  But someone should have, because now comic retailers will spend lots and lots of dollars to buy lots and lots of copies of a comic that I’d be mortified to have another living, breathing human being read.  This one’s enough to make me ashamed I read funny books.